“Vlogging” for presenting cultural heritage

Video portals respectively video-sharing websites like YouTube are more and more a substitute for the rigid TV program due to their easy and extremely flexible accessibility – you can watch the content whenever you want and literally make your own watch list – and the possibility to interact with the content and its creators by commenting, sharing or uploading your own contributions (“Web 2.0”). It makes therefore sense to consider “video blogging” as an efficient method to present, discuss, propagate and canonize knowledge on cultural heritage.

Experts on the culture and history of certain minorities should consider opening video blogs on popular platforms (especially YouTube) for regularly uploading videos with their presentations or comments on cultural materials like important literary or art works, historical personalities or events and current news and issues on the respective minorities. Thus they could reach out to much wider audiences than with a conventional website or blog and communicate knowledge and initiate a dialogue and debate on the content – even outside the minority community. That way already fading knowledge can be revived and a more coherent and up to date image of the respective minorities can be formed.

Another aspect which is somehow complementary to vlogging is the necessity to record videos of conference talks on the respective minorities and upload these as is already the case for major conferences. It would be highly beneficial to raise this procedure to a standard in order to enable the interested public to receive the scientific the results of research and scientific debate and to have a documentation of the current state of knowledge.

The MinoRecs-Blog serves as communication infrastructure for librarians, archivists and humanities researchers who are involved or leading in the process of digitizing the cultural heritage of historical ethnical minorities. MinoRecs provides them with the possibility to present their projects, to announce scientific events, inform about new technologies, debate new strategies and to establish new networks of international collaboration. By raising awareness for the issue the blog also intends to reach out to policy makers and media representatives and sensibilize the public for the urgent need to take into account the right of an ethnical minority to have its cultural heritage transferred and preserved in the digital world.